Oh, man. I’ve never been away from the blog for so long, and it feels pretty strange. I’m not making any long-term promises, but rest assured that this blog isn’t going away any time soon. And, hey, I’ve even added a handy new blog feature in the form of an ever-evolving list of podcasts that I partake in. It’s over there in the sidebar. FYI there’s some potentially offensive stuff in several of them, so listen at your own risk.

Though I haven’t been writing here lately, I have been writing. You see, this year I’ve committed to taking on the sales, shipping, and marketing duties at Old Blue Raw Honey, and though I don’t plan on using this space to push our products all the time, I will be posting (hopefully) frequently about what’s going on in our apiaries and our business ventures. I’ve also been spending a lot of time pitching all sorts of ideas around to other blogs and publications. To be honest, I’ve thought about launching a part-time freelance writing career of sorts for a couple years now, but with the exception of a few fruitless pitches, I’ve never really had the motivation or the nerve to really go for it. Now, however, promoting our honey is my job, and I’ve found it’s a whole lot easier to ask for things of influential people when I’m doing it in service of a entity that’s not just me myself. I really believe in Henry and Old Blue, and so far, that passion has resulted in a few enthusiastic responses. I’m pretty stoked about that, and I’ll be sure to let you know if/when my work is featured somewhere off this site. (For starters, Henry has a pretty good interview up on the Portland Apothecary blog that I didn’t write, but I did edit and influence quite a bit.)

I should also note that though I’m not here much, you can always keep up with me on Instagram @waywardspark, and Henry’s there, too, @oldbluerawhoney.

Instead of a real blog post today, I’m just going to offer you a long list of recipes that I turn to again and again for tried and true deliciousness. These are favorites in our house that are particularly well suited to the dark days of winter. The photos included here are from our trip with Henry’s extended family to Manzanita on the Oregon Coast.

“The Best Granola” from David Lebovitz–This is my go-to granola recipe. I always use chopped hazelnuts instead of almonds and all honey instead of a honey-rice syrup blend for sweetener.

Turmeric Tea from 101 Cookbooks–I’ve gotten really into turmeric + honey + lemon. In the beginning, I found it a little overwhelming, but now I can’t get enough.

Fire Cider from cider and rye–I chopped and grated everything up for this fire cider a while back, but it’s not quite ready, so I won’t get to taste it for another couple weeks. I don’t have any experience brewing or even consuming fire cider, but I’m super excited to try it out.

Smothered Cabbage from Orangette–This method often leads to my eating a vast amount of greenery in one sitting. I usually just make the smothered cabbage and don’t do the whole soup thing that the post suggests. Sometimes I eat it over rice with a bunch of parmesan cheese. I would imagine that one could also substitute in brussels sprouts for some or all of the cabbage, and I may well do that soon.

Lacinato Kale and Pecorino Salad from 101 Cookbooks–I made a giant (and I mean truly giant) bowl of this salad and ate the whole thing myself in the course of an afternoon. I just couldn’t stop. I used garlic and homemade hazelnut butter in the dressing in place of shallot and tahini, and I subbed in a regular onion, toasted hazelnuts, and some other kind of hard cheese in place of green onion, pecans, and pecorino. Honestly, I think you could do this salad a hundred ways with good results. So good!

South Indian Dal that my friend Leela of Tea Cup Tea posted on Cup of Jo–This is a great dinner-is-in-half-an-hour-and-I-don’t-have-a-clue-what-to-make recipe. It’s easy, healthy, and totally satisfying. The options for garnishes and condiments with this dish are pretty endless: plain yogurt, cilantro, hot sauce, toasted nuts…

Bloody Marys from Anne Parker–I don’t normally drink cocktails. (To be honest, I swore off hard alcohol twice, once after my 20th birthday party and a second time after my 21st birthday, and since then, I’ve mostly stayed away.) But when we were planning for our trip to Manzanita, Henry’s cousin’s boyfriend and I started scheming about bloody marys, and the first person I thought of was my friend Anne Parker who is something of a bloody mary aficionado. Anne’s recipe is great, and I definitely partook in the bloody mary bar to it’s fullest extent. We used dill aquavit (Broder Nord-style), but this horseradish vodka sounds like it would be a good addition.

Dill Pickled Carrots from Marisa McClellan’s Preserving by the Pint–I’ve talked about Preserving by the Pint and Marisa’s outstanding blog Food in Jars before (here and here), but even I am surprised by how often I’m reaching toward the book for inspiration. It seems like once or twice per season, I’ll be in dire need of a condiment or a pickle or a preserve to shake things up a bit, and Preserving by the Pint never fails to provide just what I desire but never would have been able to come up with on my own. These dill pickled carrots are great in bloody marys or on their own. I didn’t can mine because they didn’t last long in the fridge before we had eaten them up.

Biscotti from Alice Medrich’s cookbook Chewey Gooey Crispy Crunchy–Buy this book ASAP. There are a bunch of wonderful recipes, but being a big fan of biscotti, I’ve made several different biscotti variations, and I can rationalize excessive cookie baking because biscotti is kinda supposed to be stale, so they can hang around my kitchen for weeks.

We’ve had our honey up for sale online for six weeks now, and so far, everything has been going extraordinarily well. Our customers are emailing/Instagramming rave reviews, and I haven’t yet made any major mistakes in the packing and shipping process (Whew!).

When I originally wrote the product descriptions for each varietal, I intentionally did not include any flavor descriptors because I simply don’t have a very discerning palate, and Henry didn’t feel comfortable describing the tastes on his own. If you look around, many honeys you might find online or at a grocery store are described with words like “luscious”, “robust”, and “intoxicating”, which are words that don’t really have much meaning, and we didn’t want to go that route. We also didn’t just want to come up with a bunch of pretentious sounding adjectives that weren’t relevant or helpful. The reality is, however, that people shopping for food online really need the retailer to guide them in choosing an appealing product by providing accurate flavor descriptions.

To remedy our lack of flavor vocabulary, Henry scheduled a honey tasting event at the Oregon State University Food Science lab with his friend Brian Yorgey and five of Brian’s flavor-nerd coworkers. In the Food Science Department, the professors, research assistants, and students regularly do to organized tastings of all sorts of foods from the latest cane berry varieties to fat-free cream cheese. Honey tastes a lot better than fat-free cream cheese, so the folks we met with were quite happy to help us out.

We didn’t set up a super official taste test, but we did set out our unmarked varietals in order with the strongest flavors at the end of the line. Tasters had water to drink between sampling and sniffing each varietal. Honeys were warmed to about 80° to best bring out the flavors and aromas. We brought along several of UC Davis’s recently published “Honey Flavor and Aroma” wheels that list and categorize different tastes that appear in varietal honeys. (If you have a hankering to do your own honey tasting, you can pick up a honey flavor wheel here.)

A bottle of each varietal was passed around the table, and our tasters took free-form notes as they sampled. We tried to keep the discussion to a minimum during the tasting, although there were several varietals that elicited strong facial expressions and gasps of “Oooh!” and “Whoa!” At the end, we talked through the character of each varietal and voted on favorites/least favorites.

When you compare one taster’s notes to another’s, you’ll notice that some flavor profiles are all over the map, but a few are very clearly defined. Though the taste is pretty obvious, I was still impressed that all the tasters used the words “eucalyptus” and “menthol” or “mint”, and five out of six used “root beer” or “birch beer” for the Bigleaf Maple honey. Words like “sweaty”, “rubber”, and “toast” were also used by more than one taster to describe one varietal or another.

I’ve added a condensed version of the flavor notes from the tasting to each honey varietal that we have listed online, but the full, mostly unedited descriptions are included below. Each line was written by a different taster.

We’re living out the tail end of an early raging ice storm in these parts. The kids went off to school yesterday, but only a couple hours later, the school called to say the power was out, and I should come pick them up. Driving through Blodgett on the way to get them was pretty freaky. The roads were surprisingly ice-free even though some sort of precipitation was pouring down, but all the trees on the sides of the road were covered in ice and drooping perilously. I had to veer around tree limbs down on the highway, and I witnessed several whole trees tipping over, thankfully not on my car or the road. Once we were safely back home, I scanned through multiple anecdotal reports on Facebook of nasty road conditions, power outages, and general natural havoc.

Today, school was canceled again because the power was still off. I had big plans for the day but switched gears and decided to bake a pie and roast a giant pan of lemon-parmesan brussels sprouts instead. The two dishes hit the spot on this nasty day though I’m probably going to have to hang out on the fart patio tomorrow.

I have to confess that when I come across pumpkin pie at a Christmas party or buffet table, I usually skip it. Don’t get me wrong. I love pumpkin pie, but I kind of only love my mom’s pumpkin pie. Others just don’t live up. They’re too bland or too spicy or soggy or dry. My mom’s pumpkin pie is always just right, for me anyway. I called my mom up to get her recipe this morning, and then I tweaked it in a pretty major way by swapping in honey for sugar. I wasn’t sure if it would work flavor and/or texture-wise, but the end product turned out silky smooth, incredibly fragrant, and just right in terms of sweetness.

I used an ambercup squash (the orange ones in the photo below) in this recipe because I’ve never been too impressed with the taste of sugar pie pumpkins. I simply baked the halved, seeded squash in my barbecue until soft and then scraped out the cooked flesh to use in place of pumpkin puree.

This recipe falls on the less spicy side of the pumpkin pie spectrum. You could up the quantities of added spices if you prefer. Freshly ground/grated spices boost the flavor in a very good way.

If you’re in the market for more pie inspiration, I highly recommend following Tara Jensen @bakerhands on Instagram or checking out her blog. Her pies are always impressively beautiful but in a rustic, appealing kind of way.

Squash-Honey “Pumpkin” Pie

1 pie crust (I’m partial to this rye crust from 101 Cookbooks, but be sure to halve it for a single bottom crust.)2 large eggs3/4 cup honey1 teaspoon cinnamon1/2 teaspoon ground ginger1/2 teaspoon ground allspice1/2 teaspoon freshly grated or ground nutmeg1/2 teaspoon salt2 cups squash or pumpkin puree (You can used canned, but it will be better if you make your own. This method works well, although this time I didn’t feel the need to run it through a food processor, and it turned out fine.)1 can (12 fl. oz.) evaporated milk

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, honey, spices, and salt. Add the squash puree, and whisk until combined. Add the evaporated milk, and whisk until combined.

Roll out the pie crust and line a pie pan with it. Pour in the filling.

To bake it in a propane barbecue, place several fire bricks on the grill and top them with a heat shielding device. (I use a Lodge cast iron pizza pan on top of four fire bricks as seen here.) Preheat everything on medium for about 20 minutes. Place the pie pan in the center of the heat shielding device.

To bake it in an oven, preheat the oven at 350° and place the pie on a rack in the middle.

Bake the pie for a hour or more until the center no longer jiggles when the pan is nudged. Cool thoroughly before slicing and eating.

Back in early October, my friend Erin and I toured the Corylus collection at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository (NCGR) in Corvallis, Oregon, and basically we were like kids in a candy store. Once again, my friend and neighbor Joseph Postman, a plant pathologist at the facility, welcomed us, provided us with some literature about the collection, and quickly toured us through the rows before turning us loose to gather and admire whatever we wanted.

The orchard is home to over 800 trees including hazelnut cultivars and selections and their wild relatives originating all over the world as well quite a few varieties developed right here in Corvallis by acclaimed hazelnut breeder Shawn Mehlenbacher. Many of the trees are well established, but Joseph continues to plant saplings of newly acquired varieties from around the world as well as those that have been clonally propagated from brand new, not-yet-named varieties bred for their resistance to Eastern Filbert Blight and for other characteristics.

Like for most plant collections at the facility, the horticulturalists at the NCGR are primarily focused on keeping these trees alive for propagation and research purposes, so the hazelnut orchard at the germplasm repository in Corvallis isn’t tended the same way that a commercial hazelnut orchard would be. There’s grass growing in the rows, the plane of the land is pitted and bumpy, and the trees themselves are growing in many physical forms.

Generally speaking, each accession is represented by one tree in the orchard. A tag hangs on each tree documenting the variety name, origin, location in the orchard, and other identifying information.

The nuts are simply a byproduct of the tree preservation efforts, so most of them fall to the ground and remain there. Erin and I went to town filling bags and baskets with nuts. We consulted the NCGR’s list of “Breeder’s Choice” varieties, and gathered and labeled quite a few nuts from trees on the list, but we also stopped to collect nuts dropped from many other trees. Seeing all the nuts laying out and knowing that they were probably going to go to waste was a ridiculous motivator that kept us there longer than our schedules really allowed. It was SO much fun.

Erin, a flower farmer and florist, was intrigued by some of the attractive papery filbert clusters, and she had great ideas about how they could be used in floral arrangements.

Joseph explained that every few years he runs a rototiller-like piece of equipment down the rows to churn under many of the accumulated shells and twigs for somewhat more efficient composting. When we were there, all of last year’s nuts were still laying on the surface, but they were easily distinguishable from fresh nuts by their color and luster.

After I got home, I let all my various bags and baskets of nuts dry out for a couple weeks before I started shelling them. The diversity of shapes (round, faceted, bullet-like), sizes (pea to quarter coin diameter), and subtle color differences among the different hazelnut varieties was pretty astounding. Some small shells were completely filled, and some large shells only held puny little nuts.

The kernels themselves also came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.

I think my favorite of all the kinds I gathered and sampled is the ‘Corabel’ (above). They’re big, beautiful nuts that are easy to crack. When roasted, the skins around the kernels rub off without much effort, and they taste delicious.

After we had been picking nuts up off the ground for a while, Erin and I noticed that some of them had little holes in the sides or ends. We cracked a few of these nuts while in the orchard and quickly realized that the holey ones had resident filbertworms and were no good. We tried to avoid the wormy nuts by leaving them on the ground when we saw the holes, but about 20% of the ones we brought home also had worms in them.

Commercial filbert growers apply a variety of herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides to their orchards throughout the year for weed control and to prevent damage to the crop from disease and pests including filbertworms. The horticulturalists at the NCGR do spray the orchard occasionally to keep grass from competing with young trees and to protect the trees from Eastern Filbert Blight, but the management plan there does not include practices to prevent pests in the nuts.

In September, Henry and I attended the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District annual meeting at beautiful Tyee Wine Cellars. Dave Buchanan, owner and farmer, led the group on a quick tour of the property. He explained that the grapes at Tyee are certified organic and certified salmon safe because the owners care about their impact on the soil and the surrounding ecosystem. Their filbert orchard, however, is not organic because sometimes chemicals are necessary to control pests and diseases.

I know for a fact that organic hazelnuts do exist because the good folks at La Mancha Ranch and Orchard are down at our local farmers’ market every weekend selling them. I’m not quite sure how they are able to manage pests and diseases without chemicals, but I’ve tasted their nuts, and they’re delicious. Maybe I should investigate their program more thoroughly.

Nuts with filbertworms in them are ruined.

As I was shelling nuts, Charlotte, my bug-loving child, was super excited to collect a bunch of filbertworms in a jar with holes poked in the lid. She even brought her little “wormy-worm” habitat to school for Show and Tell. All the kids in Charlotte’s class thought her collection was pretty awesome.

If you’re in the Corvallis area and you want some good nuts, The Peach Place‘s filberts at the Corvallis Saturday Farmers’ Market are reliably good, and they’re really nice folks. Also La Mancha Ranch and Orchard (mentioned above) offers organic hazelnuts. If you’re not in Oregon, there’s a list of distributers that sell and ship Oregon hazelnuts around the country here.

In case you missed it, you can read and see more about the hazelnut harvest in a commercial orchard here.

This visit was my fifth visit to the National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis. You can read and see more about touring other collections at the facility in the WS archive (though I didn’t photograph the world collection of pear varieties that I wandered through this summer with my friend Yossy): Kiwis and Quince, Quince and other rare fruits, and Currants and Gooseberries. Next year, I would really like to put together some sort of organized tour of one or more collections at the NCGR and welcome Wayward Spark readers and friends along. What do you think? Do you want to come out and sample currants, blueberries, pears, or filberts with me? I think it would be really fun, so stay tuned for more info.

Finally finally, Old Blue Raw Honey is up for sale on our new website! I’m so excited and proud and anxious to share this news with y’all. Henry and his bees have been working like crazy all spring and summer to create the bounty that we now have stored away in buckets and bottles, ready to send out into the world.

This year, we have these cute 8-ounce squeeze bottles that that fit right into USPS small flat-rate boxes for efficient shipping. I was pretty skeptical about these jars before we ordered them because I kind of hate plastic, BUT I’ve since grown to love them. First off, they’re BPA-free, so you don’t have to worry about chemical junk tainting your pure, raw honey. Secondly, they’re perfect for doling out a thin wisp or a big dollop of honey without having to deal with a messy, sticky spoon. You can even rest them upside down to glean the “bottom of the barrel” so to speak. They’re also a great size for the honey connoisseur to collect a couple different varietals without feeling overwhelmed by a large quantity or skunked by high shipping and handling charges. So far, most of our customers have ordered two or three honey varietals at a time, and though you’re more than welcome to purchase just one, it’s probably more fun to order a pair or trio to do your own honey tasting or share a bottle with a friend without paying any extra for shipping.

You’ll notice on the Old Blue website that some honey varietals are marked as “limited release” and are priced a little higher. These varietals were harvested early in the season, and they contain significantly more pollen than main-season honeys and have distinct flavors. If you’re in the market for medicinal-quality, heavy terroir honeys, these are the ones you want. Early honeys are lower yielding, more labor intensive, and higher risk (because hives that are strong enough to produce spring honey are probably also on the edge of swarming, which is a loss that Henry works to prevent). You can read a little more about our early honey extraction here.

We have nine honey varietals currently for sale, but in the next couple months, you may see some of those go out of stock and a few new ones appear. We are only offering larger pint-size jars of main-season blackberry-nectar-based honey varietals. We’re also limiting shipping to within the United States. (Sorry, international folks!)

Our friend Halley Roberts designed our new labels, and Taylor Made Labels in Lake Oswego, Oregon printed them. We could not be more thrilled about how they turned out. If you ever need a few thousand (or hundreds of thousands of) labels printed, we highly recommend the consummate professionals at Taylor Made. Our website looks so classy only because I spent an afternoon around a kitchen table in Portland with Henry’s cousin, Ellie Harmon, who’s a computer genius and all-around interesting person (PCT through-hiker + PhD candidate). I gave Ellie a vague outline of what I wanted the website to look like (after studying the websites of friends in business including Block Shop Textiles, Nell & Mary, Clamlab, Portland Apothacary, Marble & Milkweed, etc.), and with the help of Shopify and a free customizable theme, she made my dream into a reality. I could have spent five times as much time working on it on my own, but the outcome would have only been half as good.

We’ll be doing several different honey tasting events in Portland in the between now and Christmas, and we’d love to see some of you and share our harvest. Our first event is coming up next Saturday, November 15 at Takara Studio in North Portland. For more details on upcoming events, you can keep track of us on the “Events” page of the Old Blue website.

Old Blue has a fledgling Facebook page here, and Henry’s been posting real-time beekeeping anecdotes on the @oldbluerawhoney Instagram feed. We also encourage you to sign up to receive the Old Blue email newsletter. I’m planning on sending out occasional (once a month?) emails including updates from our apiaries, information about our varietal honey availability, honey-centric recipes, and links to topical bee and beekeeping articles from national and international news. This link will take you to the sign up form.

One of the things that I really like about the new Old Blue website is that all of my beekeeping blog posts are now right there alongside our e-commerce platform to show folks that our honey is legit and give customers a sense of all the work that goes into managing our hives. Don’t worry, though. I’ll continue to publish blog posts about the bees here first, and then I’ll copy them over to there, too.

As you can see, there are lots of different ways that you can keep track of us and this business, or you can always email oldbluerawhoney@gmail.com if you have specific questions. Keep in mind that we prefer to address broad questions about our beekeeping practices through long-form blog posts. If you would like to know more about how we operate, you’re welcome to request a blog post on a certain subject, but it may take a while for us to get around to presenting it.

Thanks in advance for supporting us in this venture. We really appreciate it!

Oh, this poor, neglected blog of mine. I was really truly convinced that when my kids started school in September, I was going to spend at least an hour a day working on stories for this space, but alas, that obviously hasn’t happened. Don’t worry, though, I’m not gone for good. I have a good handful (a couple handfuls?) of post ideas/photographs that will get published eventually. I guess I would just say that you can expect me to be a little less prolific for a while. Sorry ’bout that.

But anyway…pumpkin seeds! Gotta love ‘em, right? Back in the spring, I talked my mom into growing two different varieties of hull-less seed pumpkins, and now that they’ve been harvested, I want to give you the report.

Hull-less seed pumpkins produce seeds that aren’t encased in a fibrous covering. That makes them quite a bit more palatable and digestible than your average roasted jack-o-lantern seeds that really give your jaw a workout if you try to gnaw through a handful. The two varieties we tried out were ‘Kakai‘ from Johnny’s Selected Seeds and ‘Beppo‘ from Territorial Seed Company. (Henry also grew a few ‘Styrian‘ pumpkins from Turtle Tree Biodynamic Seed Initiative.) Unfortunately, the two specimens got all mixed up, and we couldn’t tell them apart from the outside. Both are, however, highly attractive in a gnarly ‘decorative gourd season‘ kind of way.

Like most pumpkins, these seed varieties were pretty low maintenance over the summer, and as the rest of the jack-o-lanterns and other winter squashes fully colored up and hardened off in the fall, these, too, were ready to harvest. My mom can’t remember exactly how many plants she put in the ground, but the end result was about 30 mostly good-sized fruits.

We cut into a few right away, but a couple days ago, my mom decided that she wanted them gone, so we hacked up the whole lot with an ax and squished through pumpkin innards for a couple hours.

Each pumpkin produced 1/2 to 1 1/2 cups of slimy green seeds. There was a distinct difference in seed character between the two varieties. We *think* it’s the ‘Kakai’ seeds that are a bit larger and darker while the ‘Beppo’ seeds are more sage green and a little less plump. Overall, we collected about two gallons of seeds.

Some of (what we think are) the ‘Kakai’ seeds had already started to sprout inside the pumpkin, so we probably should have harvested them right away instead of letting them sit around for a couple weeks.

Mom roasted a huge pan of seeds coated in olive oil and salt, and we’ve all been munching on them constantly for the last 48 hours. I think my little 2 1/2-year-old niece loves them the most, though I’ve heard rumor that her mother has been hoarding their stash for herself.

The seeds that didn’t get roasted right away went into the food dehydrator overnight to extend their shelf life for winter snacking.

The flesh of the seed pumpkins is supposedly pretty stringy and not particularly tasty, so we composted some and gave the rest to our chickens to peck at.

Growing seed pumpkins is a fun, worthwhile activity for a home gardener to do on a small scale, but I once saw “local” pumpkin seeds for sale at a natural food store in Corvallis at $12/pound, and that seemed kinda crazy. Yes, there’s a lot of work involved to justify that price, but I think I’d rather grow my own (or have my mom grow them for me).

Mid-September marks the start of hazelnut harvest season in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Turkish farmers grow a large majority of the world’s hazelnut crop, but Oregon hazelnut growers produce five to seven percent of the world total, making this area a significant player on an international scale. Because of some losses from freezing temperatures in Turkey among other factors, the price of hazelnuts is at a record high this year, and the yield for many Oregon hazelnut farmers looks promising. If you drive through the Willamette Valley, you’ll notice a number of fledgling hazelnut orchards planted in the last few years by farmers meeting an increasing demand for US-grown hazelnuts.

Ron Hathaway’s father planted his first hazelnut orchard on Kiger Island in Corvallis, Oregon over fifty years ago, and the operation has been expanding ever since. Now Ron and his son Mike manage several orchards spread across Kiger Island including that first one that’s still in production. In addition to farming hazelnuts, Ron and Mike also grow grass seed and other seed crops (including clary sage seen in this archived post). The Hathaways have planted several different varieties of hazelnuts including ‘Ennis’ (see in the photo above), ‘Jefferson’, ‘Barcelona’, and ‘Yamhill’.

Over the summer, hazelnut orchards are groomed and raked several times to make sure the soil is completely flat so that the nuts can be swept and harvested efficiently and completely. Growers also clear out dead branches and other debris that has collected on the orchard floor.

Hazelnut trees naturally drop their nuts in September or early October (depending on the variety). Ron and Mike Hathaway harvest each of their orchards at least twice so that all the nuts get collected but none remain on the ground for too long, potentially getting wet and dirty.

Each nut is encased in a husk that will eventually release the nut as it dries out.

The trees in this orchard are about 12 years old.

Several different pieces of equipment are used during hazelnut harvest: a sweeper, a harvester, a tractor, and a forklift. The sweeper and harvester are specially designed machines manufactured in California that are used exclusively for harvesting hazelnuts. In the past, hazelnut growers have experimented with using almond harvesting equipment, but they’ve found machines designed for almonds are not effective for harvesting hazelnuts.

First the sweeper (driven by Mike Hathaway) makes two passes down each aisle, blowing all the fallen nuts, husks, leaves, and debris into a windrow in the center of the aisle.

Next, Ron Hathaway brings in the harvester pulled by a tractor. The harvester sweeps up everything in the windrow, and then fans blow the debris out, ejecting it from the machine before the nuts move up a conveyor belt into a hopper. Each step in the process is extraordinary dusty.

When the hopper is full, Mike brings over a wooden bin on the forklift. There’s a lever on the back of the hopper that, when pressed by a bin, will activate a conveyor belt that empties out the hopper into the tote.

At this point, the nuts are fairly clean, but some husks and leaves remain mixed in.

Ron and Mike together can harvest about 10 acres of hazelnuts per day. They prefer not to work in the orchards when it’s raining hard, but a little drizzle is actually nice for suppressing the dust. If the nuts get too muddy, however, it can be difficult for the processor to clean them sufficiently.

Mike will haul each semi-load of hazelnuts to a buyer in Independence where they’ll be washed, dried, and shipped all over the world.

Thanks so much to Ron and Mike Hathaway for allowing me to photograph their harvesting process!

Ahh…We sure have been enjoying this bit of indian summer to its fullest. Aside from being freaked out about fires in this ultra-dry weather, our days have been long and full (of school among other things). This past weekend, Henry’s parents organized a quick camping trip to Scott Lake in the Cascades, and although Henry and I both left a hundred half-finished projects behind, I’m so glad we went.

The Scott Lake campground sits in the shadow of the North and Middle Sisters (of the Three Sisters mountains), and our campsites probably had the best views in the whole area. The lake itself is pretty shallow (especially this year) and relatively warm, perfect for person-powered boating and swimming. Henry’s dad is a major boat enthusiast, so he brought his canoe and an inflatable raft.

This was our kids’ first experience camping “in the wild” (as opposed to the backyard), so they were bursting with excitement for days ahead of the trip. The two of them slept in their own tent without incident.

Henry’s parents go camping fairly often, so they have a full camp kitchen setup ready to go at a moment’s notice. In some ways, our campsite was probably better equipped than our own home, and we had anything we could possibly want. It helped that we could park nearby, and Henry’s parents hauled everything in easily with the assistance of their canoe cart. We contributed some of the food, and every meal was delicious.

In the mornings, there was bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast, coffee, orange juice, and more. One dinner, Henry’s stepmom made foil packets of burger, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage with campfire baked biscuits (and s’mores) for dessert. The other, Henry and I prepared burritos with beans, salsa, sour cream, cabbage, cheese, and sautéed peppers and onions. Lunches were kind of a free for all, but no one went hungry, for sure.

I was really kind of amazed by how long a day could be without any distractions or commitments to work or home life. There was plenty of time for reading, boating, hiking, AND sitting by the campfire, swapping stories.

The campground had the cutest privies.

Henry’s stepmom and I took a quick hike over to mostly-dried-up Hand Lake. The sights of alpine forests, dry lakebed, nearly barren lava flows, and tall mountains in the distance were quite impressive.

The shelter near Hand Lake has been there for nearly a century.

My kids had never been canoeing before, but that didn’t stop them from jumping into the boat almost as soon as we arrived and heading out for multiple pajama-clad morning paddles. By the end of the weekend, Levi was really getting his stroke technique down, and he even took the canoe out on his own for a while (though he needed a little help getting back to shore).

If you want to camp at Scott Lake there are a few things you should know:

The mosquitos can be pretty terrible in July, but when we were there, they didn’t bother us at all.

From what we’ve heard, the campground is mostly empty during the week but is often full during weekends. (Henry’s parents staked our claim on Thursday afternoon, which was probably a good thing because there weren’t any sites available the rest of the weekend.)

There’s no potable water, so you’re gonna have to bring your own.

You can’t park directly next to campsites, so be prepared to pack in your gear a short ways.

Charlotte turned five yesterday. We celebrated the occasion with an afternoon at the coast. First we had delicious sandwiches and pizza at Panini in Nye Beach (quite possibly the best restaurant in Newport unless you’re desperate to eat seafood). Then we surprised her with a trip to the Newport Candy Shoppe where we gave her two dollars and told her she could buy anything she wanted. She has a major sweet tooth, but we’re usually pretty strict about limiting sweets and almost never let our kids eat candy, so this was a major thing. Charlotte’s eyes about popped out of her head as she ogled all the taffy, Jelly Beans, gummy candies, and suckers. She was in heaven.

At the beach, there was fun with bull kelp and lots of splashing in the very cold surf. At the end of the day, we threw two filthy kids in the bathtub and sent them off to bed exhausted.

Charlotte will start full-day kindergarten on Tuesday, so basically my baby isn’t a baby anymore. She even learned to ride a two-wheel bike without assistance a couple weeks ago. She still loves dirt, cuddling, bugs, princesses, picture books, sugary things, purple things, all fruits and vegetables, our cat, her brother, silly jokes that have been told a hundred times, water activities, and staying up way past her bedtime. At her checkup the other day, the doctor told us that she’s still in the 25th percentile for height and weight, but even though she’s small, the girl has grit. And we still love her to pieces.

A very peach-intensive week and a half in mid-August started with 20 pounds from (locally famous) The Peach Place and then there were another 28 pounds from a farm stand on Lingo Lane near Junction City. A few days later, I picked about 25 pounds or so off my in laws’ trees. During peach season, my family can put a lot of fresh fruit away in a hurry, which is a good thing because tree-ripened peaches won’t ever keep very long. Charlotte would probably each peaches exclusively for days if we’d let her.

Aside from stuffing our faces and dripping peach juice all over everything, I froze a good majority of our haul. My peach freezing method: peel (blanching if necessary), slice, splash with lemon juice, stir, spoon into Ziploc bags, label, and then freeze. If you do it this way, they will brown a bit but not too badly, and you’ll need to thaw them for a while when you want to use them unless you can handle a big ol’ clump of frozen peach.

What I really want to tell you about is the Salted Peach Jam recipe from Marisa McClellan‘s newish cookbook Preserving by the Pint. I told y’all about Preserving by the Pint (and Marisa’s Mustardy Rhubarb Chutney recipe) in the spring, but after that, I kind of set the book aside and didn’t crack it open again until I had a load of peaches on my hands and needed a good peach preserve STAT. Flipping through the “Summer” chapter had me lusting over a whole bunch of different recipes, but I honed in on the Salted Brown Sugar Peach Jam rather quickly. This stuff is pretty much manna from above, and I’m sure it’ll help me relive this beautifully hot summer jar by jar over the winter months. My new favorite morning meal (inspired by something I had at The Mill in San Francisco in July) is sliced good bread (sometimes homemade), homemade almond butter (made from almonds that Henry traded for honey with his Californian almond-grower buddies), and this salted peach jam. The stuff is also great over ice cream.

My peach jam came out a little on the runny side, but that’s the way I like it.

I also put up a batch of spicy peach barbecue sauce using another recipe from Preserving by the Pint, and it is outstanding. Just do yourself a favor and buy the book. You won’t regret it.

Peel and pit peaches, blanching if necessary. In a bowl, mash them up with a potato masher until they make a chunky pulp. Stir in the sugar, and let the mixture sit for a few minutes until most of the sugar is dissolved.

Transfer the sugared fruit and all the other ingredients into a non-reactive pot, and place it over medium-high heat. Bring it to a boil and then turn it down to simmer until it’s thick, 10-12 minutes, stirring regularly.

Jar it up in sterilized jars. Wipe the rims, screw on the lids until “finger tight”, and then process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.